Putting It In Perspective

"National Security: A Mexican cartel plots to blow up a dam -- in Texas! Another pack of Mexican terrorists takes cash from Hugo Chavez. And what is Washington wringing its hands about? Why, racism in Arizona.

If still more proof is needed that the border needs to be secured, the latest threats emerging from Mexico should do the trick. Together, they signal that the country's war could advance to a more savage stage.

The threat is no longer just over smuggling routes. Last Tuesday, the Washington Examiner quoted Mexican and U.S. intelligence sources as saying Mexico's Ejercito Popular Revolucionario (EPR), a Marxist terror organization aligned with drug cartels, is secretly receiving funds from Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.

The group seeks to overthrow the Mexican government while engaging in drug trafficking, much as the FARC guerrillas do in Colombia. What's disturbing here is not just EPR's growing ties to the drug trade — which in time could lead to an alliance with the Los Zetas paramilitary drug cartel. It's the threat to Mexico's democracy, as well as the group's expertise in destroying infrastructure like gas lines, which EPR did in 2007.

These blood-chilling scenarios aren't fantasies. They are signs of an emerging threat that gets little attention from U.S. lawmakers. Instead of focusing on making the border secure, they play partisan political games, pandering to potential voting blocs by dangling amnesty in front of illegal immigrants, grandstanding against Arizona's effort to enforce federal law and coming up with one excuse after another for not erecting a border fence.

As illegal armed groups plot to blow up infrastructure even in this country, Democrats in Congress are more concerned about an illegal immigrant getting his feelings hurt if a police officer in Arizona asks him to show some ID."

Investor's Business Daily